Misconduct/questionable behaviour

Case

Lead author of a research paper disagrees with content of a linked editorial

17-09

The author of an accepted research paper (that showed some benefits for a controversial treatment) contacted the journal shortly prior to publication of the paper. It is the policy of our journal not to share commissioned editorials with authors ahead of time. This author had, however, received a copy of the journal press release in preparation for a press briefing.

Case

Submission of an already published case report

17-07

一个案例报告是接受《华尔街日报》。一个封面ing letter was supplied by the two authors stating “Our work has not been published elsewhere and we have been actively involved in the preparation of the paper. No conflict of interest. Not published elsewhere. Patient consent obtained for case report and images to be published”.

Case

Author accused of stealing research and publishing under their name

16 - 17

We received a letter from a third party, accusing author A of putting his/her name against an article, published in our journal, when the research itself belongs to author A's student.

Case

Reviewer requests to be added as an author after publication

15-05

A paper was submitted to our journal. The associate editor assigned to the paper immediately assigned a reviewer who he knew was well qualified to give a good review, as they had worked with the authors before. The editor did think it odd that the reviewer was not an author on this particular paper, given the close collaboration. However, when invited, the reviewer (R1), did not flag up any conflict of interest or request that they should be an author on the paper.

News

Publication ethics: fraud and misconduct

This ALPSP (Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers) Training Course has been developed in collaboration with COPE.

The training course will take place onWednesday 5 November 2014, West One, London. The tutors include former COPE chair Liz Wager and Donna Neill (Wiley–Blackwell Publishing).

Event

Publication ethics: fraud and misconduct

This ALPSP (Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers) Training Course has been developed in collaboration with COPE.

Full details can be found on theALPSP’s website

Case

Ethical concerns and the validity of documentation supplied by the authors

13-03

We became concerned that not all of the co-authors were aware of a research paper submitted to our journal due to the difficulty receiving responses from the email addresses that had been supplied and their nature, given that the authors all worked in a hospital/academic institution. Despite repeated requests and attempts we remained dissatisfied with the responses and did not feel certain that all of the authors were aware of the paper.

Case

Confidentiality breach by an associate editor

12-32

The authors of a manuscript sent an official complaint to our journal regarding a breach of confidentiality by an associate editor (AE). The authors had been informed by the supervisor of a reviewer of a manuscript.

Case

Retraction of the first article in the case of duplicate publication

12-30

Earlier this year it came to our attention that a published article in our journal (journal A) had also been published in another journal (journal B). The article in journal A was published later than the article in journal B, so following COPE guidelines on duplicate publication, we contacted the authors for an explanation. Their response was to blame the editor of journal B for publishing the article without their agreement.

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